May 15, 2009

The radishes are sprouting (and are already bigger than this photo shows) and growing up outside to avoid having to harden them off.

Radish Seedlings May 14

The onions have shot up.

Egyptian Onions May 14

I’ve planted some beans (I ordered heirloom beans, for eating of course, from Rancho Gordo. However I heard the founder on the radio explaining that you could even plant the beans because they are heirloom and grow true!). I saved some of little E’s yo-baby pots, used my leftover seed-starting mix (this time rather than following the instructions to mist after planting, which didn’t seem to work for the second round of tomatoes, I mixed the water into the dirt and then filled the pots with the moistened mix) and then planted 1″ deep–or what I think 1″ is, anyway. We’ll see–it would be pretty cool if it worked out, though who knows how well pole beans grow in pots?

Bean pots: vaquero, cranberry cargamento, and yellow eye.

Finally, all the tomatoes and squash have been transplanted! They are in the process of hardening off, so when they are not outside, here is where they live. As you can imagine, I am eager to get them out on their own, and I’m sure they are eager to get better light than this provides as well!

There were a few kinks which hopefully have sorted themselves out. Anticipating transplanting the squash, and knowing that you need to water well post-transplant, I had held off on watering so long as the soil appeared to be OK. Wednesday morning I touched the soil and it seemed a bit dry so I watered the squash just a little. Well, not enough, as when I came home they had wilted quite a bit. There were three in each cell and I need to get it down to one anyway, but this wasn’t how I intended to do it. In each cell, there was one seedling that was only wilted at the leaves and not the stem. I transplanted anyway and watered well and they have all bounced back. I’m going to press on, though I’m a bit worried that this early stress is something they won’t recover from, but I’m hopeful that since the seedling I plan to keep never wilted on the stem or on the true leaf (or at least, only a touch) that it was relatively unharmed. I need to be brutal sooner rather than later–but I’m finding it hard to snip off the weaklings!

I’m a bit unsure about my Early Girl tomato. It appears to be a “potato leaf” tomato, for the reason that its leaves look like potato leaves, (obviously!). Some of them appear to be curling under a bit but I don’t know if this is just how those leaves are, or if there’s something the matter. I thought perhaps it was drying out (although none of my other tomatoes are drying out) but stuck my finger in the soil and it felt damp enough. It got a little water when it started to rain and doesn’t look any worse today, so maybe that’s just how the leaves are meant to look. I’ll post a few closeups though just to show what I mean.